EnglishisEasy/Elinglésesfácil

Halloween time.  Is there a best time to talk about the writer that made perhaps the most to give the literature of horror some of its greatest pieces ever? And that for sure is Edgar Allan Poe, the Bostonian born on January 19, 1809. He did not write Frankestein or  Dracula and still that was not necessary to make him the indisputable recipient of the "Master of Horror" title. The author of short stories such as MS. Found in a Bottle, The Black Cat, The Facts in The Case of Mister Valdemar, The Fall of The House of Usher, The Premature Burial, The Masque of the Red Death ventured   also into poetry with The Raven and  Annabel Lee. He is considered the creator of detective stories with The Murders in the Rue Morgue and  The Purloined Letter and even Science Fiction The Unparalleled Adventures of Some Hans Pfall.  His only novel is one of sea adventures, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket, which describes one of the most disturbing pas...

Yes, she is and so is Barack Obama or Rafael Correa. The word ruler in this case stems from the verb Rule which means to exercise dominating power or influence; to govern in other words. The translation into Spanish would be REGIR so the noun Ruler is Regidor, aquel que gobierna generalmente algún tipo de territorio con autonomía jurídica . The extent of that power and authority is limited by the source of that power. In the case of constitutional presidents that power comes from the people and is limited by what they may decide (or at least that is the idea).  That explains why the words Rule and Ruler are not usually associated to that term.  That is not the case with Kings or Emperors whose power and authority supposedly  is conferred  by God himself so the word Ruler is more appropriate in this case.  So here a Ruler, if not used as the instrument to measure lenght, then is the one who governs a country. Queen Elizabeth II is a Ruler and so were his ...

Sure you know the old adage "Less is More". Well, this is one of those cases when we can apply such words. It is difficult to believe that a silent black and white movie could become a success in our days and not only that but also become an Oscar award winner at the same time. That was made possible by the talented producers of The Artist  the movie that won the Oscars to Best Film and Best Actor 2011(Jean Dujardin).  The story is about this successful actor and a young promising actress who have to face the transition between the time of silent films and the coming of "sound" movies. The actor who has passed his prime already cannot put up with the new trend while the actress who is passionately in love with him, has no problem and becomes the next big thing. The movie show the fall of one and the rise of the other but instead of having a bittersweet ending the opposite happens. The recource used is truly ingenious and how it happens makes perfect sense. D...

VIGILANTES are different in Guayaquil,  definitely not as athletic. In Guayaquil, my hometown, a Vigilante is a Traffic Officer. Of course the word Vigilante doesn't necessarily mean the same for other Spanish speakers who preferably use that term as an adjective rather than a noun. As such it means To be alert at all times. Here is an example: Hay que mantenerse vigilante y cuidar de nuestra salud en todo momento. In English the word VIGILANTE also exists and is usually spelt like that, with no variations whatsoever. A Vigilante in other words is someone who takes justice on his own hands but is not part of the legal system. This individual acts parallely and as such is really more a criminal than a justicer in the eyes of the Police.  Famous vigilantes include: Batman Spiderman Dirty Harry Of course they are all fictional characters but there are cases in real life situations in which certain inviduals or groups heve risen to fill the void of a Police for...

Who's Iron Man's fiercest enemy? None other than the Mandarin, an enemy that kept a low profile during recent years to the point of disappearing entirely because of the fact that it was Chinese. At the time this character was created the political map was a bit different and everything that was related to Communism was associated to something evil (it was the time of The Cold War after all). But ever since the end of the eighties that perception began to change and  The Mandarin was deemed an expression of racism and thus better put aside. Now when you see Iron Man 3 you will see that the actor they are using is not any Oriental but Ben Kingsley, an Oscar award winner for his outstanding performance as Mahatma Ghandi. The Mandarin was never completely defeated for he was in possession of ten rings that made him amazingly powerful. BTW, the armor in the pic is not Iron Man's. Apparently, that's a new model of War Machine's armor               ...

Hace no mucho escribí acerca de nuestros cuatro equipos entrando a los octavos de final de la sudamericana. Es una pena que ninguna de haya pasado es verdad pero lo peor que podemos hacer es sentarnos para lamentarse. Reflexionar de por qué sucedió es mucho más práctico. Barcelona perdió el partido que debió ganar acá no allá. Es obvio que Gremio ya no es el equipo poderoso que solía ser y de haber tenido más actitud se le podría haber ganado en ambas instancias.Claro siempre podemos culpar a Perlaza que se esforzó en estar presente en este partido sólo para equivocarse de manera tan desatinada. Siempre podemos decir que el impacto sicológico que causó en el equipo fue muy duro y a la vez alentador para Gremio pero todo eso es pura especulación. Barcelona tuvo tiempo para recuperarse y no lo hizo. Gremio tuvo tiempo para recuperarse y sí lo aprovechó pues un autogol sucede porque el contrario está presionando no al revés. Lo de Liga de Loja es perdonable e incluso encomiable. Se ...

Unlikely, really. We know that Atlantis existed thanks to Plato who made  a reference in his "Dialogues" ,  probably written around 360 BC. The problem is that since it was only referred to him by someone else, Plato could not really provide an accurate location of Atlantis. What we know is that its patron god was Poseidon (so its culture was Greek-influenced), that it held an important naval empire that once threatened the city of Athens, that it disappeared overnight due to some unknown catastrophe, that it was a very old civilization (Plato said it existed 9,000 years before his time) and that wherever it was that was in front of the Pillars of Hercules. Now those Pillars are for real. The northern pillar is known as the Rock of Gibraltar (in Gibraltar of course) and the one to the south is Jebel Musa in Morocco. Beyond them lies the Atlantic ocean which means a lot of territory. It it is still there chances of identifying it are very scarce. First of all, a lot o...

Que Nebot vote por Lasso no me sorprende, pero que aún haya tanta insistencia por parte de la oligarquía en hacerse con el poder sí. Los oligarcas, a quien nuestro entrañable presidente llama con gracia "pelucones" se han hecho con el poder en muchas ocasiones en el pasado y jamás han podido hacer mejor cosa que favorecer sus propios intereses y aún eso lo han hecho con gran torpeza y falta de visión. Cada vez que veo a uno de ellos subir al sillón presidencial solo siento temor de lo que va a pasar con nuestro país. Estas son personas que sólo conocen cómo manejar sus haciendas o sus compañías y ese es el criterio que aplican a la hora de gobernar. No están preparados para nada en la vida sino para dar órdenes a sus empleados y al subir al poder no ven un país sino una oportunidad de hacer mejores negocios que los beneficien a ellos y a los suyos.  ¿Cuántos de ellos han tenido que protegerse de los mosquitos con un toldo? ¿Alguna vez han soportado empujones en algún ...

Out of curiosity I went to see this movie just to see how the image of one of the most revered men in world history was treated. If only for that I saw a film that tries to be consistent but also takes a lot of liberties such as blatantly neglecting to mention that Lincoln had four sons and not only one. The story begins with Lincoln being five or six and losing his mother in odd circumstances. He presumes his mother was poisoned by an enemy of his family and when he is old enough he decides to take revenge in his own hands but fails miserably when his enemy survives his attack and in turn almost kills him. He is saved by a man, Henry Sturgees,  who befriends him and trains him (later on it is revealed that Henry is also a vampire). Lincoln is trained for ten years and under Henry's indications he starts slaying vampire after a vampire until it is the moment to fight his original enemy. At the same time we witness the awakening of Lincoln's political side, his becoming ...

One of those things that mark a distance between English and other languages (Spanish included) is the capacity to absorb influernces from other languages without losing any of its own identity. While Spanish looks more "English-like" than ever, English keeps absorbing influences, assimilating the ones it really needs and discarding the ones are not so useful after all. And it's still English. One proof of that is this notable feature of having regular and irregular plurals. Undoubtedly, the plural form of nouns may not be recent but still it helps us see how flexible English can be in order to absorb influences from different sources. The problem with that is that while English has irregular plurals, other languages only use the S at the end to indicate the plural form of a noun leading to involuntary mistakes. Here are some of those cases Noun         Irregular plural      Spanish mistake s Man           Men ...

Bram Stoker, an English author of the XIX century, wrote several books but it was Dracula  the work that made him immortal so to speak. The vampire that defines all the others though fascinating  as a concept is as a character a flat one: his main purpose is to secure a good and constant source of blood. Perhaps I am mistaken and this character's personality has more sides that he appears to be. The problem perhaps is that in order to explain Dracula what other writers have done is to offer new versions of his affairs writing other books but rarely have I seen a detailed analysis of what the original story had to offer, As a proof here is a comment on what happened to Jonathan Harker who was visiting count Dracula in his castle to make some business (Dracula wanted to  buy a house in London) when he discovered there were other secret dwellers in the dark castle.  One night Jonathan is alone and decides to explore the castle and runs into a room where there are...

One of those fairy tales that we know and don't know for real is The Little Mermaid. The reason for this claim is the fact that most of us know of this story thanks to Walt Disney who made a movie using one of the classic stories by Hans Chistian Andersen, a Danish writer who created The Little Mermaid in 1837. And the story he wrote was quite different from the Walt Disney version. To start with the Little Mermaid does save the Prince from certain death and falls in  love with him in the process, but that is not the only reason she wants to become human: she also wants to have a human soul and for that she needs somebody to love. looking for a being powerful enough to give her what she wanted and she did. That being is the synister Sea Witch.   The following day, the mermaid wakes up having two beautiful legs, able to breathe air but unable to speak or sing for that is the price the Witch took as her payment. The first one to find her is the Prince who is ama...

In book 11 of the Odyssey, the hero Odysseus (Ulysses) makes a different kind of journey in order to find the only person who can help him find his way back to the island of Ithaca, his home. It happened that person, the prophet Teiresias, was dead so he had to go to the land of Lord Hades, king of the Underworld where the Dead dwelled according to the Old Greeks. According to this story, dying was not the only way to descend to the Land of the Dead. some Greek heroes descended  while they were very much alive.  The Greek underworld could apparently be accessed in different points. Orpheus for instance just descended to it by only walking and so did Herakles. In this case, Odysseus sails there following the witch Circe's indications, to the very edge of the river Ocean. Once he gets there Odysseus makes a sacrifice killing a lamb and offering the blood to the dead, a rite which the Greek called Nekyia. One by one people who had met Odysseus approached him attracted by th...

One of those seminal stories that somehow touch us through the ages with us being unaware of that is "The Murders in the Rue Morgue".   This short tale was written by none other than Edgar Allan Poe in 1841 and it is considered the first detective story though Poe never used the term. Apparently he just wanted to tell a good story, of course a story as he envisioned stories. One of its essential characteristics is that Poe tells the story as if he were one of the characters, in this case the main character's personal friend.  The story is set in France and describes the investigation of the murders of two women, an old lady and her daughter who had been horribly murdered. The Police of France is in the case but they are unable to solve the crime. They are not even able to find out why the women were murdered the way they did, so they decide to ask the intervention of C. Auguste Dupin, a brilliant man who serves as a detective in cases too complicate for the Police...

There are things I like about this animated film and things I just don't like. Let's begin with what I don't like . The film begins with Alex (the lion), Marty (the zebra), Gloria  (the hippo) and Melman (the giraffe) bored of being in Africa (?). Excuse me...these animals were born in Africa and were happy to be there at the end of Madagascar 2. However, now they actually want to return to the Central Park Zoo in New york where they used to live. What is the message? Africa is not fun enough for these animals? They were not meant to be free? Then, where are the other African animals they befriended in the previous film? Where are Alex's parents? I know Bernie Mac (who lent his voice to Alex's father) passed away after Madagascar 2 was completed but still...The movie begins completely ignoring the fact they exist and without a single thought of saying good bye or thanks, Mom and Dad, Alx is desperate to leave and off he goes. The four friends decide to m...

A university, not An university. The problem here is what most people learn at school (Ecuadorian school that is) Most of us learn there is a rule about the use of the indefinite article. According to this rule we must use A before nouns that begin with a consonant e.g.  A knight A pond A submarine We use An before nouns beginning with a vowel, e.g. An earring An ox An umbrella Nevertheless, this rule neglects to explain that it is incorrect to say An universe. Quite often students apply the rule inadvertently making mistakes because they are overgeneralizing. The rule is Ok but it is also limited and imperfect. If it were perfect then saying "A hour" would be correct since we are using the article A before a consonant and yet it is not correct. "An hour" is. To clarify things let's begin by remembering that sounds play an important role in English and sometimes they may be misleading. The vowel U for example has several sounds: thUrsday sUper...

First and foremost, the TOEFL ibt is perhaps one of the most difficults tests out there not only for how complex it is  but for its leght: it takes almost four hours to complete with only a mandatory ten-minute break. You need computer skills. Just knowing English will not do in this exam. Since it is taken online it is necessary to be able to use the mouse and basic commands such as Cut, Copy, and Double Click. In other words if you don't know how to use a computer you will not be able to take the test. You need a credit card. The payment is online. Sending traveler's checks is no longer an option. Now there are institutions that may make things easier for you: they make the online purchase themselves and sell you the vouchers, but that is an extra service that not everyone offers. Make sure if there are institutions in your location that want to go that extra mile. Taking TOEFL ibt Prep courses helps a lot but that doesn't guarantee you are going to obtain the d...

Dracula really existed but he was not the monster described by Bram Stoker though perhaps some would say he was a different kind of monster.  Unlike the Frankestein creature that was entirely a fictional creation, Dracula was real and his name was Vlad Tepes. He was truly a noble, not a count but a  prince, The ruler of a territory known as Wallachia in Eastern Europe which he defended against the Ottoman empire that was at the time (the mid-XV century) threatening to invade Europe crossing the river Danube engulfing Bulagaria and what is now Romania11. Also called Vlad the Impaler (for  a good reason) created for himself a reputation so cruel that the Ottomans themselves who were fierce warriors came to fear him. His patronimic name was Dracula but he definitely was not a vampire. The myth of vampires, the undead, those who cannot rest after dying seems to have originated in the Balkans a region where Vlad Tepes was from, though many scholars say that references ...

Tres son los grandes beneficiados luego del partido Ecuador - Chile de ayer: Ecuador por supuesto que luego de sumar 16 puntos fortalece su fama de imbatible en Quito, Argentina que enfrentará a Chile disminuido luego de que dos de sus jugadores obtuvieran sendas tarjeta rojas; y Venezuela quien no temerá la experiencia goleadora de Felipe Caicedo quien acumuló su segunda amarilla.                  Ver a Ecuador salir del trance en que lo puso la infortunada acción de Paredes fue épico. He visto cosas así pasar antes y a nuestra selección ser incapaz de recuperarse mientras la selección antagonista alegremente aprovecha el momento para llevarse une victoria. No ver pasar esto una vez más hizo a este encuentro especial con relación a los otros. Primero el gol de Felipe Caicedo, más tarde en el segundo tiempo ese penal tan sufrido y ese gol de último minuto sólo confirmaron que Ecuador ahora ya sabe recuperarse de situaciones difíciles, a...

Well if we use the term FAMILIAR as a noun then it does not mean what we in Spanish know as PARIENTE. The word PARIENTE is RELATIVE in English. If we use FAMILIAR as an adjective then the meaning is the same and also not. It is the same when the term is used as something that is commonly known to us, something we have been in contact with for a while now. One example of that is our country: we know its traditions, history and problems so that knowledge is familiar to us (if the situation is the opposite then we use the word UNFAMILIAR). As such the meaning is the same in Spanish. It is not the same if we intend to use it as something connected to our family. For instance, if in Spanish we want to say ASUNTOS FAMILIARES then in English we say FAMILY MATTERS but not FAMILIAR MATTERS, an expression with a different meaning. In other words, the word FAMILY is not only a noun but also an adjective. In Spanish FAMILIA is a noun but never an adjective. English has an extra meaning for...